Cultures of Artificial Intel

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

The stories we tell about artificial intelligence reflect our fantasies and anxieties about powerful technology, as well as our beliefs about the nature of intelligence and consciousness. If computers one day surpass human intelligence, will the machines enslave or kill us all, or will they help us to achieve world peace, stop climate change, and live in luxury? This class explores the history of intelligent machines, both real and imagined. We’ll ask how films (Her, Ex Machina, Ghost in the Shell) and fictions (by Kazuo Ishiguro, Isaac Asimov, and others) about artificial intelligence reflect our technological hopes and fears. Alongside these narratives, we’ll read scholarship about the dangers and potentials of artificial intelligence, philosophies of human and artificial consciousness, and studies of how machine learning has already begun to transform human life. We also will experiment with existing AI technologies, including a platform that helped me write this paragraph.